The 1st and 2nd stage

Stage 1
Today was the first day of racing! I felt confident in doing well in the uphill time trial because I like the climb and my legs felt good. My goal was to be under 18 minutes going off from last year's results. My official time was 18:39 placing me at 72nd place out of 109 starters. I was pretty shocked because I thought I would be closer to 90th place.

When we got back to the house, our power went out for about 2hrs! Awesome! We had just started our laundry and just as we left to go to the laundry mat, the power comes on! All it took was for everyone to leave the house.

Stage 2
The course was a 7 mile circuit with a 3k climb and a fast decent. I loved the course, but it seemed like a lot of other people liked it too because they went really hard up the climb. I survived to the top of the climb and I didn't have enough to keep going so I got dropped, unfortunately. I realized what I need to work on, which is positioning in the field. I kept digging hard to try to catch back on, and I couldn't so I dug to stay within the time cut. I picked up dropped riders all along the way and we ended the race with about 9 girls in our group.

This stage was a great experience and a wake up call because it shows me what I can work on.

Now we are waiting around for the results to be posted to see if I can race tomorrow. I have to be within 5% of the finishing time.

Sorry for no pictures! There is no time to take pictures, but if you go to:

http://www.podiuminsight.com/nggallery/post/photo-gallery-san-dimas-tt-women/image/5938/

,there is a picture of me time trialing!

Day 2&3

DAY 2

I don't have much to say about my 2nd day here in California simply because I didn't do much. I accidentally booked my plane ticket on the wrong day so instead of arriving 2 days before the race, I arrived 3 days before the race. Our hosts had work all day and Robin didn't come to CA until 4pm.



So, I hung out all day long, sleeping, watching TV, making food, and doing homework. It was a good thing because I got the rest I needed.



DAY 3

Today was a LONG day. It began with a trip to Velo Pasadena which is a bike shop in downtown Pasadena. We went there to get a safety check on my bike and Robin's bike and if I would've known how expensive a safety check is I probably would risk it all to win it all! Just joking, it was a good idea to get a safety check. Here is a picture of Velo Pasadena:

After the bike shop trip, we went to pre-ride the TT course. The course is a steady 3.8 mile uphill. There was nothing too technical about it and the scenery was pretty, although I will not be looking at the scenery when I am racing my guts out.

Here is a picture of all of the race food, it is randomly thrown in to this blog, but it is still important!

We had a wonderful dinner with some of the people who have been taking care of us. We had pizza but this is not you normal pizza, all the ingredients made in the pizzas were 100% home grown. They made their own yeast! It was very delicious!

Here is Dorthey Wong, she was at dinner last night, she is the woman that has helped cyclocross and other disciplines grow in Southern California. She has helped Alexis Ryan (my best friend) and many other young juniors find their calling to cycling! She is one of the greatest people here in So Cal!

Now its time to get the show on the road and race. I race at 2:39 today (west coast time). Hoping for speedy legs and a fast tail wind up the mountain and NO Mountain Lions chasing me on Glendora Mountain Rd (apparently there are mtn lions waiting to chase ppl on the TT course).

The First Day

I woke up at 3:30am to aboard my 6am flight! The flight went smoothly and I slept like a baby the whole way. I had a 2 hour layover in Houston and then straight to Ontario, CA! I lucked out on both flights with the whole row to myself! I have no idea how that happened. On the second flight, we could watch direct TV so I watched my all time favorite movie Harry Potter (the 7th sequel).

When I arrived in Ontario, I was greeted by Robert and Betty! They made a sign for me and took very good care of me! We went straight to lunch where we went to the China town of Pasadena and we had a type of lunch called Din Sun.

Din Sun is a very fast way to serve a lot of people! Waiters and Waitresses come out with carts (each with a different food on it) and you take what you want off the cart, then the worker stamps your card and that is your order. It is a very effective way of serving because you never have to wait on your server or your food!

Here is a pictures of the table! The most different food that they served were chicken feet.... we didn't get any of those to eat. I felt like I was in a different country!

Afterwards, we went to a tea bar where they Bobo tea. It is basically tea with tapioca at the bottom. I was skeptical at first because I didn't know what tapioca tastes like. I had passion fruit tea with the tapioca at the bottom. When you drink the tea, the tapioca is sucked up through the straw, and then you chew on the tapioca. It was pretty good, it tasted like a bland gummy bear!





Lastly, we went to the Pasadena Tuesday Night Worlds! It was around the Rose Bowl stadium and each lap was about 3 miles long! All along the road it said Horse Crossing.... I thought that was interesting because we were in the city. Bahati was there racing along with 100 other people, I only did a couple laps around easy to save up for Friday!




All in all, I really love California! I think it is awesome and I can't wait for racing! Oh yeah, we have a Starbucks about 2 blocks from our host housing! SCORE!

Bike Fits in Maryland

On Sunday, my coach and I left for an 8 hour road trip to Annapolis, Maryland. We went to get a bike fir from Stu Waring, John Howard's second hand man. Stu is the best bike fitter on the east coast! The drive was more like 9 hours because of all the traffic we ran into going around Washington, DC; oh yeah, it was raining the WHOLE entire drive!! Those poor windshield wipers!

When we arrived, we had a fantastic dinner at Stu's house with some of Maryland's finest cyclists. His wife made delicious dinner of salmon, salad, green beans and rice! The next morning we woke up and headed to the Bike Doctor (a bike shop) for the fit. Robin was the first victim of the fit, and after her, I got my fit. Stu watched me how I walked and he figured out where I am tight, then fixed it on the bike. He showed me examples of a good TT fit and a bad fit. Most importantly, he straightened me out on my road bike!!

The trip was well worth it, not only getting a good fit, but it was an educational experience as well!

A huge thanks to Stu Waring and his wife Christine, and also the Bike Doctor!

And how could I forget, Maryland is known for the dance clubs!!

THANKS UNCLE STU!

Stu, Robin, and (me) in front of the fit station at the Bike Doctor:

Update Slack

This picture is from my most recent race, I got second on a 45 mile road race, thats me on the far right in the red and white. Jackie Crowell, from Team Type 1, took first place. She was not in the picture because she is a couple bike lengths ahead of me, thats how amazing she is!


I have been slacking on updating my blog lately. No I haven't been crazy busy, or given up blogging, I just haven't had a single thing interesting to blog about. Now I think about it, I do have "somewhat" cool things going on. My dad just got married to my new stepmother named Andrea Heller, she moved here from Colorado recently and has an awesome Australian Shepperd named Rena.

I have raced 2 road races so far at the Greenville Spring Training series, getting 3rd the first weekend and 2nd this past weekend. Both races had over 40 women in the field, which is fantastic for women's cycling!

I have been commuting to and from school on my single speed cruiser. It's about a 3o minute ride one way, and I wear my helmet, naturally. Hopefully more kids will ride their bikes to school as the gas prices in Charlotte rise.

I am working very hard in school, I am currently working on my senior exit project, my topic is "Women's Professional sports are ignored in the Equal Pay Act". I feel like its going to be a great project because I am so close to an example of the inequality.

My new favorite quote is "What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger". My US History teacher told us this as we were writing 10 pages of notes!

The more I write this blog, the more I feel like I am writing a Christmas card to my family members, telling them how my year has been going. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog! :)